


The Nine-Lifer

by brightest_abstraction95



Category: Original Work
Genre: Cats, Comedy, Con Artists, Conspiracy, Cults, Drama, Fantasy, Female Protagonist, Gen, Ghosts, Intrigue, Male-Female Friendship, Mystery, Mythology - Freeform, Original Mythology, Strong Female Characters, a cat named vader, a cute dork boy, a satyr, a secretive super clever badass main character, darknet surfing, it's got it all, what else could you want
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 08:27:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14951139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightest_abstraction95/pseuds/brightest_abstraction95
Summary: There is a myth. Well... almost. There is more of a stock character who comes up in other myths enough to become a pattern. This stock character is a protector who must be killed 9 times before they die.As far as anyone can tell, this was a bloodline of royal guards-turned-mercenaries who used their demigod-or-demon-or-enchantment-given 9 lives very well. As the centuries went on, the bloodline seemed to dwindle.M.T. is an orphan, but she's past that. And she's a con artist. The thing is, she thinks she might have been murdered last week.





	The Nine-Lifer

•••

M.T. awoke to a rustling. She startled a little and discovered that there was a massive kink in her neck, and immediately after realized that she was on the floor. On the floor, laying on her side in front of the door to her apartment, with a rotten copper taste in her mouth.

Craning her neck, she looked across the way toward the rustling to see a black cat with just a little white spot around its blush colored nose daintily stepping in and over her pile of packing boxes.

M.T. stared at it blearily for a short time. Then, she tried to pick herself up but her arms and legs felt distant and numb, so she lay for just a little longer before trying again. This time, she stumbled up while the cat sat inside one of the boxes, watching her evenly. She hobbled over to it, stretching out her hand very slowly, and let it tickle the long side of one of her fingers before it bumped its head beneath her palm.

“What are you doing here?” She asked. “How’d you get in?” She pet it, then, until bending over started making her back ache. So she gave the cat one last pat and turned to make her way over to her kitchenette.

She dug through one of the two cabinets in the kitchen with anything in it, and pulled out a bottle of pain pills. The other cabinets had an assortment of very nice dishes she had bought to fill the space, but she never used any of them. She tossed the pills onto the counter and went to the fridge, pulling out her jug of milk. The water filter on the fridge had broken a few weeks ago, and she knew she was out of water bottles.

She cracked open the lid of the milk and was smacked by a foul smell. Spoiled? She’d bought this yesterday. She’d used it last night. She put a hand on her stomach, wondering if that had been what made her pass out. She shrugged, setting the milk on the counter next to the trashcan.

She swallowed three or four pills dry and turned around to find the cat up on her counter, watching her again. She stared back at it, a little disconcerted.

“You want something?” She asked it. It tucked its butt under itself and sat, tail swishing back and forth. “Yeah, sure.” She answered what she took as affirmation. “Hungry?” Its tail flipped again. “Ok.” She took out a bowl, and brought down the cereal she had. She poured the cat the bowl of cereal and set it on the counter.

“That’s all I got,” She told it, feeling defensive. “I don’t know what cats eat.”

It blinked at her, unimpressed, but bent its head down to eat.

With the cat crunching behind her, she moved back through her apartment to her bathroom. She glanced at herself in the mirror, and was a little surprised to see a line of dark, dried blood from her nose. What kind of night had she had? She wondered. She touched the blood, but it had dried so completely that it hurt when she tried to rub it off. Stripping quickly, she stepped into a very hot shower and let the water work out some of the stiffness and tension in her body, from an apparently long and solid sleep on the floor.

After showering, she did feel better. She had to knock off hard crust from the top of her toothpaste bottle, and brushed her teeth before moving back into the bedroom. She found her phone on the floor, dead, so she swept up her charger from behind her nightstand and plugged it in before throwing herself onto the bed.

Exhausted. She was exhausted. Floor naps did nothing, apparently.

The last week or so had been harrowing, and she would need a solid month to truly recuperate from this job.

She rolled over and stared at her phone, watching it intently as the empty battery symbol blinked at her, waiting for the white screen so she could check her messages.

Finally, it did, and she forced herself to sit back up.

#571, her associate who remained nameless on her devices, had messaged, called, and emailed her a total of 86 times, each sounding more harried.

The texts, of course, were in code.

The plants need watered, they said. Don’t forget to water the plants.

Do you know how long it’s been since the plants have been watered?

How do the plants look?

Are the plants dying?

Do you need me to pick anything up from the store?

And they continued. Over email, they were more specific, because her associate was better at controlling things on the internet, but that made them worse.

MT, are you there? Do you need me to do something? You haven’t checked in. Can you meet? I think we need to meet.

She felt a short rush of anxiety, and scooted to the edge of the bed. She stuck her hand under it, feeling the rough side of her overnight bag. Still ready to go.

Then she swiped her finger across her phone screen, and found that…

The notifications had come in over a number of days?

She exed out of her messages and to the calendar. She had been asleep for a week and a half.

She started feeling sick and paid much closer attention to the way her head felt. She grabbed her overnight bag from under the bed and dug through it to find the burner phone she kept tucked under the folds of some clothes. She dialed a number and sat nervously.

“Hello?” A voice came through, hesitant.

“Ezekiel?” She asked.

“Who’s asking?”

“It’s Mercedes – I mean, shit.” She rubbed her face. “It’s Maizy.”

Silence. Silence for a solid minute and a half. Such a long minute and a half – her stomach flipped and maybe it was empty, because she didn’t remember eating for the last week. But, she waited for him to respond.

“Maizy?” He asked finally, sounding faint.

“It’s me.” She answered.

“Fuck me…” He whispered. “What… I mean… Are you ok? We need to meet.”

“Yeah, yeah we do.”

“Regular place?”

“Affirmative.”

They hung up simultaneously.

She sat on her bed for a solid hour, mentally mapping out every inch of her body over and over again. She didn’t… feel wrong, or different. She didn’t feel like anything had happened to her. Maybe that was worse. Had her… temporary employers found out why she was there, actually?

She couldn’t remember anything. What had they done to her?

•••

That evening, she left a window cracked for the cat, and was intent on going to the grocery store. Had to, all of her food had spoiled: she had had to throw all of the food in her fridge away, down to the dumpsters behind her apartment building. Nonperishable good items were cumbersome, she needed things she could go through quickly. Leaving behind things like that was sloppy, and there was absolutely no way in hell she was taking any of it with her.

On her way out the door, she found her key on the floor directly in front of it, instead of in her wallet where she’d thought she’d left it.

She grabbed a basket and some essentials: half a gallon of milk, a few rolls of sushi, some fruit and lunch meat. She paused in the cat and dog food isle, wondering what to get for the cat. It had seemed to like the cereal well enough, but that wasn’t healthy, was it? She grabbed a couple cans of cat food, then, that looked like what she’d seen in movies, and moved on.

What were the best foods to help one recover from a week of amnesia-inspiring drugging? She grabbed a box of immunity-boosting tea, and went on to the check out.

The cat was gone when she got back to the apartment. She gagged when she opened the cat food anyway and set it on the window sill, then she set aside one of her boxes of sushi and stuck the rest of the grocery bag in the fridge.

She hiked herself up onto the counter and ate there, content for a little while to let her mind wander. By the time she finished her meal, she turned around to see the cat back, poised over the can of food she had left out. She smiled a little, and went to bed.

After an hour or so, the cat came and curled up at her feet.

•••

Mid-morning the next day, Maizy dressed herself, grabbed both phones and her wallet, and headed out. She strolled to a park four blocks away from her apartment, and made her way slowly on the walking path. After about ten minutes or so, she felt someone sidle up beside her and keep pace for another few steps. It was not much longer, however, until the figure sped up just enough to swing around and grab her into a tight hug.

“Ezekiel,” She hissed.

“Damn protocol,” A voice answered, muffled in her shoulder. “I thought you died.”

Briefly Maizy hugged back, before taking hold of the person’s shoulders and pulling him back. Ezekiel was… well, almost tall, and lean. He wore baggy, layered clothes and a bulky pair of headphones around his neck. He had shaggy black hair and was currently carrying a crumpled paper bag.

“Do you want to sit down?” Maizy asked him. He nodded, and they walked over to a bench across the way. “What’s in the bag?” She asked, nodding toward it.

He passed it to her. “Breakfast,” He answered. “You always forget.”

“Oh, thanks.” She opened the bag to find a bottle of orange juice, a big bagel and a container of cream cheese. She pulled the bagel in half and started tearing chunks out of one of the ends, scooping the cream cheese out and shoving the bites into her mouth.

“So, what happened?” He asked urgently.

“I don’t know,” She answered around a mouthful of bagel. “I woke up yesterday evening on my floor. But I thought I’d only lost part of a day. My phone was dead, all of your messages came through at once.” She paused to swallow. “Did you have anything new about the job before I dropped off the radar?”

“Nothing that could have pointed to you being in danger. And nothing after you disappeared, either. It had to have been an outside job. If you had been found out by the big guys at Macron, my best guess is they knew better than to get their hands dirty.”

“So I guess we have to scrap Macron?” Maizy asked, and rolled her head down, trying to relieve some tension in her neck. “Solid month of recon wasted.”

“You’re telling me. Mercedes Truman was the perfect identity. But yeah, to be safe, Macron is off.”

“Alright.” Maizy said, finishing off the bagel and trying not to think about the projected payout for that job.

“Burner?” Ezekiel asked, holding out his hand.

“Yeah. And Mercedes’.” She dropped both of the phones into his hand. “Mercedes’ apartment will be empty by midday tomorrow. Here’s her card, too.” She flipped out her wallet and slid the card out of one of the sleeves, holding it out for him.

“Excellent.” He said, taking the card. “Well, I’ll let you go. I’ll try to do some more digging for what happened, but… something makes me think there isn’t anything to find. Be careful, yeah, Maizy?” He asked.

Maizy grined at him reassuringly. “Sure thing, Eezy.” She answered. “Don’t worry about me.”

He gave her a bleak look that said “Yeah, right.” But she pushed herself off the bench.

“Thanks for the bagel,” She said, ruffled his hair, and was off.

•••

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed chapter 1! I will be publishing chapter 2 next week.
> 
> Please, please, please subscribe and comment and like and share. I am publishing this on wordpress, and tumblr, and am starting up an instagram: 
> 
> https://ninelifer.wordpress.com/  
> https://thenineliferexists.tumblr.com/  
> instagram @nine_lifer
> 
> See you all next time!


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